Monthly Archives: June 2014

My career as an executive coach began many years ago with a phone call from the CEO of a Fortune 100 company. I had just given a leadership clinic to the CEO’s human resources department. This is what I was … Continue reading →

The higher up you go in your organization, the more you need to make other people winners and not make your job about winning yourself. This is a hard concept for people who like to win to grasp. The more … Continue reading →

An easy habit for people who like to win to fall into, and a surefire shortcut for killing conversations, is to start a sentence with “no,” “but,” or “however”. It doesn’t matter how friendly your tone is or how honey … Continue reading →

I’m a little skeptical of self-diagnosis. Most people tend to overestimate their strengths and overrate their weaknesses. They might think that they are really bad at something at which they’re really only mediocre or “kind of” bad. Where they see … Continue reading →

As you work your way through my video series and written blogs, you are going to hear about a number of personal flaws that none of us are immune to. In the course of reviewing this material, you may recognize … Continue reading →

There’s a reason I devote so much time and energy to identifying interpersonal challenges in successful people. It’s because the higher up you go in the organization, the more your problems are behavioral. You’re smart, you’re up-to-date, you know the … Continue reading →

A classic problem of smart, successful people is Adding Too Much Value. This bad habit can be defined as the overwhelming desire to add our two cents to every discussion. A slight variation on Winning Too Much, Adding Too Much … Continue reading →

Winning too much is the #1 challenge for most people, because it underlies nearly every other behavioral problem. If we argue too much, it’s because we want our view to prevail (in other words we want to win). If we … Continue reading →

As a 10-year board member of the Peter Drucker Foundation, I had many opportunities to listen to Peter Drucker, the world’s authority on management. During this time, Peter taught me some very important lessons about life and leadership. One of … Continue reading →

The origin of the word mentor goes back to ancient Greece–specifically, to the character of Mentor in Homer’s epic poem “The Odyssey.” As Odysseus departs for the Trojan War, he leaves his trusted friend Mentor in charge of both the … Continue reading →